IT could be straight out of the 1950s sci-fi horror film The Blob — a slime which devours everything in its path. And the substance has young scientists in Bolton asking a bizarre question: Is it smarter than us?

And the work of pupils at Bolton School led by biology teacher David Teasdale and Dutch teacher Hans Mulder has been highly commended at the prestigious International Science of Stage Festival.

Their project ‘Is slime mould smarter than you?’ is based on a joint international project between students in the boys’ division and at the Jan Tinbergen College in the Netherlands.

Over the last two years, pupils have been exploring the behaviour of the organism which is not a plant, animal, or fungi and doesn’t have a brain. Yet its ability to seek out food sources and form complicated networks between them seems to suggest intelligence.

In the most famous experiment with slime mould, oats were set out in the shape of Tokyo’s subway stations, and in just 36 hours the slime produced a network very similar to the underground system that took human engineers 100 years to produce.

Pupils have conducted their own experiments to try to understand and manipulate the behaviour of slime mould, undertaking a genuine biological investigation.

Experiments have included comparing networks produced by the mould to road networks, finding which food sources the mould prefers, manipulating the life cycle of the mould, investigating if the slime will always find the nearest oat, and investigating if slime mould can solve mazes to find oats – which it can!

Mr Teasdale and Mr Mulder had a stall at the Science on Stage fair to explain their project, one of around fifteen projects selected to run a workshop.

Mr Teasdale said: "The standard of all the projects at the festival was so high that it was a great honour to receive the highly commended award.

"It is just unfortunate that the award has my name on it, as it is the result of the hard work of all the boys in the New Biology Society at Bolton School and our colleagues from the Jan Tinbergen College in the Netherlands. It would not have been possible without the support of the school, especially our wonderful biology technicians Julie Hartley and Stacey Dawber."

More than 200 different scientific projects from 40 countries were showcased at the festival, with just ten receiving a highly commended award.

The Blob, which starred Steve McQueen, was released in 1958. The film shows how a corrosive alien entity crashes to Earth from outer space and eats and dissolves citizens in the small US community of Phoenixville.